This is the chilling moment a gangster boasts ‘it is easy to turn a little child into a killer’ by handing them a gun.

The heavily masked men who are linked to one of the biggest gangs in Birmingham, tell TV presenter Ross Kemp how they handled their first guns from when they were just 13 or 15 years old .

In a terrifying conversation in the trailer above they say children much younger are being targeted for recruitment and gun use by gangs.

The television show Ross Kemp and the Armed Police is being aired on ITV at 9pm on Thursday September 6. To visit the ITV Youtube channel click here .

One member is captured on camera saying: “I would say 15 is old because there are kids now and they are getting them and holding them and they are 12 and 13. Practising at secondary school and that.

(Image: ITV)

When Kemp asks: “And prepared to use them?”

They all reply: “Yeah, of course.”

One says in a matter of fact way: “They are the most impressionable ones right now, it is easy to turn to a little child into a killer.”

Another says: “It’s the only asset that these kids really know about. Except for drugs. What other assets do they teach them about at school? They don’t teach hem about mortgages. Kids know about instant cash. And them guns get it."

The presenter joined West Midland’s Police tactical firearms teams to investigate how gun crime in Britain has exploded.

During the shocking sequence, the men boast how they can get hold of a gun within a matter of minutes and ‘one phone call’ for hire or for keeps.

They also describe the “empowering” moment they first held their deadly weapon in his hands and how they felt invincible.

One said: “Powerful. When you first get it man, it's like Popeye just popped his can of spinach and whosh.”

Another replies: “I just ran up a hill the first time I got one. Just the flood of power and the extension of it, I thought yeah. The kick, that’s like thunder that is.

He went on: “It's a gun man. And they’re pretty as well you know, they make them like precisely. The engineering on them f****s.

One said he wanted to keep a gun on him ‘everyday’, because: "You don’t want to leave it."

In the show, he follows police into a property in the Midlands where two guns are uncovered.

Ross expresses surprise at the setting of the house, among suburban streets.

He says: “There is a sad irony for me, that I am standing outside a suburban house in Birmingham, wearing the same kit I wore in Iraq and Syria…

"Police have just found a sawn-off shotgun and a pistol in the garden of the house behind me.

"And this is happening on a regular basis.”

Chief Inspector Danny Delaney, who runs the firearms unit, says times have changed since he became a police officer: “From 1991 to now, it's a different world.

"If I took one of the more experienced officers from then and brought them down here now, they wouldn't be able to believe what they've seen.

"It's totally and utterly changed.”

Chf Insp Delaney tells Ross that much of the gun trade is linked to drug dealers.

He says: “They go hand and hand.

"I think most armed criminality is do with drugs, or the supply of drugs.

"There's usually an overlap.

"When you find firearms, you'll find drugs… teenage kids get sucked into gangs and my big fear is the younger they are they don’t have the appreciation of what they are getting themselves into."